Your time is near, the mission's clear
It's later than we think
Before you slip into the night
You'll want something to drink
Steal away before the dawn, and
Bring us back good news
But if you've tread in primal soup
Please wipe it from your shoes

Just then a porthole pirate
Scourged the evening with his cry
And sanctuary bugs deprived
The monkey of its thigh
A dust arose and clogged my nose
Before I could blink twice
Despite the stuff that bubbled up
I gave some last advice:

The flesh from Satan's dogs
Will make the rudiments of gruel

Deduct the carrots from your pay
You worthless swampy fool

Exploding then through fields and fen
And swimming in the mire
The septic maiden's gargoyle tooth
Demented me with fire
I drifted where the current chose
Afloat upon my back
And if perchance a newt slimed by
I'd stuff it in my sack

Soon I felt a bubble form, Somewhere below my skin
But with handy spine of hedgehog
I removed the force within
Suzie then removed her mask
And caused a mighty stir
The angry mob responded
Taking turns at grabbing her

The foggy cavern's musty grime
Appeared within my palm
I snatched Rick's fork to scrape it off
With deadly icy calm

The brothel wife then grabbed a knife
And slashed me on the tongue
I turned the blade back on the bitch
And dropped her in the dung]

The crowd meanwhile had taken Sue
And used her like a rag
To mop the slime from where the slug
Had slithered with the bag

In summing up, the moral seems
A little bit obscure...

Give the director a serpent deflector
A mudrat detector, a ribbon reflector
A cushion convector, a picture of nectar
A virile dissector,a hormone collector

General Commentdont get me wrong, i love this song and i love phish. but it seems pretty clear that this song is made up of random nonsequiturs, and as whole its completely nonsensical. but isn't that the point? that's part of why I love phish. they (usually) don't take the lyrical part of music seriously at all. they're just dicking around and having fun. maybe bits and pieces of the song have meaning, but if you find coherent meaning in the song as a whole, you're overanalyzing.

General CommentI wanted to paste my comment on "Guelah Papyrus" here as I think it relates. I especially love how a "picture of Nectar" (proprietor of a music venue- "Nectar's") is enough to act as a prophylactic!

Cavern is indeed a vagina image, and there is unsettling sexual imagery in the song as others have commented, both of rape and of disease.

Quote from my GP entry:

I think this song [Guelah Papyrus} is about expecting to catch a cheating girlfriend in the act, with undertones of fears of venereal disease as a running theme? Why? Well, when you listen to the other lyrics on the album, STD's are something of a running theme-- it's a public health announcement to jam band types everywhere. "Whatever you do, take care of your shoe" (Cavern) lest you get a "Crab" in your "Shoemouth" (Manteca)

"In summing up, the moral seems
A little bit obscure...

Give the director a serpent deflector
A mudrat detector, a ribbon reflector
A cushion convector, a pitcher of nectar *
A viral dissector,a hormone collector"

(Cavern) - this entire list is a collection of synonyms for condoms. With the exception of a "picture of Nectar." Nectar's was a club that Phish played in and while I haven't seen the proprietor myself, it would presumably be enough of a turn off to prevent any activity that might result in catching anything!!! And I think bacteria can come in the shape of little serpents, ribbons, rods, or tiny spheres. Yuck.

This album came out during the AIDS epidemic when I was a teenager-- I think the message was pretty clear at the time. The remainder of "Cavern's" lyrics contain a lot of disease imagery, and other earlier tunes like Golgi Apparatus suggest that microbiology tends to come up in Phish lyrics.

So the singer imagines himself paralyzed by a spider, a "fly on the wall" to witness the tryst of his lover, and then imagines walking in, causing frowns all around-- and noticing that his photo frame on the nightstand has been turned flat on the table.